Surrender
by heptapus
Summary: "Every man has a monster inside of him; some just keep it at bay longer." (AU after S1, Slash, Complete Summary Inside)
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **This story is an alternate universe future fic. It follows Season 1 and almost entirely ignores Season 2.

**Summary**: Humanity has been surrendered to the alien Overlords and is allowed to continue existing though only to serve them. In a reprogramming facility, Jimmy finds reason to hope despite being swallowed in all-consuming despair.

**Warning**: Dark themes, vividly graphic sex, rape, violence, and torture scenes - some of which will involve minors, homosexual relationships, mostly nonconsensual BDSM, drug and alcohol use, character deaths, severe angst, suicide, language, voyuerism and probably many other things I can't think of at the moment. This is rated "M" for a reason, if you cannot make the mature decision not to read because you are disgusted by any one of the things listed in this warning, then you shouldn't have changed the story search settings in the first place.

Despite these warnings, this story is not a PWP (porn without plot). There is an overall storyline.

**For clarification**, paragraphs describing a "flashback" are written in present tense (ie. I do, I run, I see). Paragraphs which represent thoughts and events in the 'present' are written in past tense (ie. I did, I ran, I saw). Dialogue from the past or that is remembered is italicized.

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**Surrender**

1.

Tiny eyes, dark and unruly beads, sunken beneath skin, leathered and tanned by the sun's rays and wrinkled beyond its years. This is Warden Brayden. He is judge, jury, and executioner at the Rochester Reprogramming Facility for Boys.

He watched me as I slipped into his room. He sat in a lounging chair, a book sprawled open on its arm, silver-rimmed bifocals balanced on the tip of his long and severely pointed nose. I shuffled across the carpet. It was a soft, shaggy, burgundy colored thing.

He placed a ribbon delicately between the pages of his book, closed it, and stood when I entered. I held a silver tray, balanced on top his nightcap, dark amber colored brandy in a crystal decanter, and a single glass.

I wouldn't look at him. I set the tray on the table near the foot of his bed. I poured the brandy into the glass. My hand trembled. Some spilled onto the tray. I froze at his touch on my back. It tingled. Shivers raced up my spine and slipped down to my legs. My knees buckled, threatened to break and bend.

"This is your first time bringing me my drink," he commented, his voice like the rustling of dried leaves.

I nodded. It was an effort. Every night one of the boys had to bring the warden his drink. That boy was always hand-picked by the warden himself.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Four eighty one. It says it…on my tag," I answered, my voice dull and muted. I lifted the silver token embossed with the numbers chained around my neck as proof.

He laughed. I flinched, stood rigid, pressed my teeth together. I finished pouring the drink and set the decanter on the tray once more.

"No. I mean your name. You had a name before, right?"

Names. We don't have names anymore. We aren't allowed to have them anymore. A name means you're human and the only humans left in the world are in service to _them_. I wasn't human anymore and I had no desire to be.

"Do you not remember your name?" he asked.

He smiled when he said it. It was a patronizing smile, a caricature of sympathy and understanding. He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand.

I wanted to pull away. I couldn't pull away. It meant punishment. I would have pulled away once, long ago, back when I didn't think punishment could be as terrible as submission. I now knew better.

"That's alright. I'll give you a name then," he told me.

He took hold of my chin and turned my face towards him. He looked me over. His eyes prodded into every crack and crevice of my face. I kept my expression apathetic. I waited, my breath bated, burning in my chest.

"Evan," he decided.

He released me, sauntered away from me and sat on his bed.

"Just for tonight," he said with a wink.

The bed was large and sprawling. Ten men could sleep in it. It creaked protest beneath him. His blanket was smooth, black and gold. He patted the spot beside him. I put the decanter and glass back down on the tray and went to sit. There was a mole on his neck, under his left ear. I noticed it, darting nervous glances to the collar of his black robe.

"How old are you, Evan?" he asked.

"Seventeen. It's in my file."

"You were young when the war ended," he noted.

He sounded surprised. He wasn't. My age is why they sent me to the facility. He knew that. I was still young enough to qualify for reprogramming. Another year and I wouldn't have qualified.

"But not so young…much older than you look. Do you remember the surrender?" he asked.

"Not really."

It had been a cold November day. They had told us to lay down our weapons. Some continued to fight but they were soon killed; executed by the same humans that negotiated our surrender. Our camp had been occupied by a group of those humans shortly after the white flag waved. By them, our resistance unit, the 2nd Massachusetts, was systematically disassembled.

"I see. It's for the best that you don't," he assured me.

He placed a hand over my own. It rested on my leg. He gave it a squeeze. Then his hand slipped down, brushed along my inner thigh and up towards my groin. I shuddered, ducked my head to hide the grimace. He stroked me once, pulled his hand back, stood and de-robed. Beneath the robe, he wore crimson red spandex underwear. He tossed the robe onto his chair. He turned towards me. The bulge in his crotch was difficult to miss.

"Go ahead and undress, Evan," he instructed.

Black and silver hairs trailed up out from under the band of his underwear, crossed his belly button and became thicker across his breast. His chest, belly, buttocks and upper thighs were all a sickly white. I stood and began removing my shirt.

"Just your drawers is fine," he recommended.

Out of his top bureau drawer he pulled out a condom. He walked back to his bed, pulled back the blankets; his sheets were black and silken. He crawled onto the bed, removed his underwear, unwrapped and slipped the condom over his dick. His pubic area was clean shaven.

I left my shirt on, peeled off my sneakers, dropped my drawstring sweatpants and boxers. They pooled on the ground at my feet and I stepped out of them. I didn't bother covering myself out of want for modesty. The room was cold. I shivered. I looked small and shriveled because of it. It made me strangely glad.

He gestured to the bed. I laid next to him on my side, my back to him. I cradled my face in the crook of my elbow. He placed the blankets over us. He sank beside me, wrapped an arm round my waist, nibbled my ear in his dried lips.

"You're trembling," he noticed.

He clucked his tongue, tsk-tsked, the perfect mockery of concern.

"It's alright. You'll be alright," he whispered. He stroked my shoulder, rubbed his rough and calloused palm along back, chest, low abdomen. He used his other hand to slip a finger inside me. I flinched. He moved it in and out and around, and dug a second finger in. He massaged the rim, relaxing the opening. His erection poked against my upper leg and buttocks.

Heat spread through me. I buried my face in my arm. I closed my eyes. I thought of a room hundreds of miles away where light streams through a broken window, refracts off a fragment of glass, and dazzles on the ceiling, glistening gems, stars across a faux sky.

"Are you crying, Evan?" he asked.

_Jimmy…_

I shook my head. Tears streamed warm and mutinous down my cheeks. He breathed heavy against my ear, took my hand in his own as his other continued to work me further open.

"But why are you crying? You're enjoying this," he told me.

He dragged my hand down beneath the blankets. He forced me to touch my own forming erection. He unfurled my fingers, curled them around my hard on, and made me stroke it. I heard myself whimper. I felt myself moan.

"See, Evan. You like it," he said.

_Are you sure about this…Jimmy?_

He entered me then and I thought of the sun splitting the sky, a palate of pastel colors dripping off the horizon. I thought of a boy I'd only finally managed to let myself forget years before. His eyes are haunted, but he smiles easy. He holds me in his arms, kisses me breathless.

We lay together on the dusty floor of an abandoned house in some Virginia suburbs. We've run out of clothes to strip from one another, our fingers can only clutch and ripple across each other's bare flesh. I roll to my belly, he lines kisses up along my shoulder blades.

"_Are you sure about this?" _he asks me.

I smile at him. I tell him, "_Yes. Do it."_

"_It's going to hurt,_" he reminds me.

"_You act like you're the one that'll be in pain_," I laugh and he smiles, all at once wry and serene

"_Maybe I will be…"_

The warden thrust into me, his movement jerky and violent. It ripped through me like fire burning up my backside. He grunted, hot against my skin. He grasped my hip and shoulder, pulled me towards him as he pushed into me.

I bit into my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. My fingers clawed at the sheets. I thought of the boy gently slipping inside me, his hips rocking in time to my own. His fingertips delicately trace the contours of my back. He brushes kisses to my skin. His breath is sharp and labored. He whispers to me sweet and soothing things as I cry out involuntarily from the pain. I have to beg him not to stop.

The warden climaxed. He quaked, and jerked and flailed, dragged me tighter to himself. When it was over, he loosened his hold. He gasped for breath. He collapsed against me, his sweat slicked body pinning me down. He pulled hastily out of me. He crawled out of the bed, removed the condom, and tossed it.

The boy and I climax together; his ejaculate flows into me, warm and sensuous. He cradles me against his chest, our fingers twine. He buries his face in my neck, suckles my skin. He slips out of me, slow and gentle. He gives me room to turn over. I settle on my back and he relaxes atop me and connects our mouths.

The warden picked his robe off the chair and tugged it on. He didn't close it, his dick hanging flaccid in plain view, its tip slightly glossed with remaining cum. He went to the tray. He took a sip from the glass I filled earlier. On the table was a tiny metal box. He opened it, took out a cigarette and fancy silver lighter. He placed the cigarette on his lip, lit its tip. He took a long drag.

"_Are you hurting_?" the boy asks.

"_That's a stupid question_," I whisper.

He looks at me with worry. I trace my fingers along the contour of his face and brush over his lips. He kisses their tips, kisses me fierce, and tells me to sleep.

"Get up and dress, Evan," the warden commanded.

He went and sat in his chair. He drank his brandy, rested the glass on the chair arm, and sucked on his cigarette. The smoke billowed out of his mouth, withered and white.

I pushed myself up to sitting; my body weak and drained of energy. I carefully lifted myself up and, stilted, picked my clothes off the ground. Every move sent a shock of pain up my spine and threatened to crumble my legs beneath me. I felt sore and raw. I pulled up my boxers and pants as one.

"Stand at the table until I've finished my drink. Then you can take the tray back to the kitchen," he instructed me.

I hobbled to the table and leaned against it for support. I stared at its mahogany top, waiting as he drank his brandy. I couldn't look at him. Aside from the tray and the metal box of cigarettes, there was also a stack of papers and an old rotary telephone on the table. I curled my finger in the telephone cord. I skimmed what little I could see written on the papers.

He clattered his empty glass on the silver tray. I startled. My eyes darted up to his, immediately dropped back to the table. He cupped my cheek in his hand.

"Thank you for the drink," he said.

I nodded. The movement was stiff and strained. He let me go. He walked away from me.

"I suspect you'll be bringing me my drink again some night soon," he remarked.

I moved to pick up the tray. His hand clapped on my shoulder and I froze.

"Have a good night, Evan," he said.

"Thank you, sir," I replied.

I lifted the tray, paused, my breath caught in my throat.

There was a book underneath the stack of papers. It had tabs sticking out of it. The tabs were marked with different names. Names I didn't recognize, of people I did not, could not know. Some of the names I couldn't see partially or entirely.

I turned from the table. I limped across the room. I slipped out the door.

One of the other boys waited for me down the hall at the top of the stairwell. He didn't meet my eyes. He took the tray from me. He would carry it down the three flights of stairs to the kitchen. He jogged hurriedly out of sight.

I struggled down the one flight. I leaned heavily against the banister for support. On the dormitory floor, I limped into my assigned room. Inside it was dark with little tiny nightlights along the floor like a fairy path. There were two rows of bunk beds. There were ten in all, five lined up on each side of the room. Most of the beds were occupied, boys asleep in them or pretending to be.

I found my bed. I fell into it. I curled my thin blanket over myself. I squeezed my eyes shut. Behind my lids I pictured the tab in that book that had caught my eye.

-_amin Mason._

I thought of that boy I'd only finally managed to let myself forget. It had been three years now since he'd died.

Another casualty of surrender.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note**: For clarification, paragraphs describing a "flashback" are written in present tense (ie. I do, I run, I see). Paragraphs which represent thoughts and events in the 'present' are written in past tense (ie. I did, I ran, I saw). Dialogue from the past or that is remembered is italicized.

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2.

I dreamed about Ben that night.

It was a dream I hadn't had in a long time. It was the dream I had every night after he died for months on end. I used to pray for the dream to stop. When it stopped it was as though someone had sliced away a piece of me, I no longer acted or felt like a whole person.

In the dream I find him standing in a field of tall grass. It's the field where I found him years before after they brought his father's body back to camp. There are fireflies all around. A star falls from the sky. He turns to me. He's been crying. He reaches out a hand and before I can reach back the sky turns black and blisters red and I wake up.

I sobbed myself to sleep again but the dream didn't come back.

In the morning, one of the other boys kicked my mattress. I startled. My eyes opened, light burned them. I shut them again.

"Get up," the boy commanded.

His eyes were a satin brown color. His mouth was too big for his face. The tag on his neck was etched with a two and a seven. This was the leader of my dorm. It was his job to wake us in the morning, too early for the sun to rise. It was his job to make sure we did our chores. It was his job to herd us all into the reprogramming classrooms. It was his job to test that the reprogramming was working.

He would gladly tattle on another boy for a pat on the head.

"Everyone has their turn with the warden, four-eighty-one, just because it was your turn last night doesn't mean you get special treatment today. Get up," he told me.

There was too much snide for his words to be a kind of sympathy. He was glad it had been my turn. They all were. It meant it wasn't theirs. He walked away to wake others.

I sat up. I grimaced and choked down my moans. Pain rippled up and through me. The night came back to me in blinding flashes. I dressed. I couldn't let the others see my pain. I couldn't let them see I was weak.

Though there were twenty beds, there were only twelve boys in my dormitory. At the start, when I'd first arrived at Rochester, all of the beds had been filled. Over time, boys left. They graduated. Or they died. One way or another we all get out of Rochester.

The reprogramming facilities had been established exactly five months after the final cease fire and the last resistance units were subdued. After occupying our camps, we were separated by age. Everyone under sixteen went to one place. Everyone over fifty went to another place. Everyone in between went to another place.

I had been taken with the under sixteens to a housing development surrounded by barbed-wired fence. There we were separated by sex. Girls were kept in one house, boys in another. The houses had been stripped of all items, nothing but empty husks. For weeks, we were interrogated and assessed. They took our information; age, height, weight, health, history, our role in the war. They had never told us why they wanted the information, but they tortured some of us to get it.

I had refused to talk at first. I didn't want them to know who I was or where I had come from. I had begged them to send me back to my unit. I had demanded to see my captain. They told me he died. He'd fought back. He'd been executed. Learn from his mistakes.

They had tied my hands down, flicked a switch across my forearms for every question I wouldn't answer. It bit away my flesh until there was nothing left but the red underneath. It was then that I had cried and I told them what they wanted to hear.

In many of the resistance units, some of the children had worn an alien device called a 'harness'. It had been used to enslave them. During the war, we had rescued those children and removed the harness. After assessments and interrogations were finished, they took those children away. They put them in the basement of one of the houses. They locked them inside. They filled the basement with a gas.

Morning chores at the reprogramming facility always started in the fields. There were two acres of corn, squash, beans, tomatoes, lettuce. We cleared the crops of weeds, watered and fertilized them, sprayed them with pesticide. We harvested any ripened product.

Next came the animals. There were three herds of cattle, at about twenty heads a herd, and a pen of thirty or more pigs on the facility grounds. We mucked the stables, refreshed the water troughs, dumped feed in the corrals. The youngest boys went to the five hen houses, sprinkled corn meal on the ground and checked the nests for eggs.

After, we went inside and the oldest boys stripped the youngest of their clothes and showered them. We dressed them in fresh linens and sent them to their first reprogramming class. Then we were allowed to shower. By that time, the water was cold. It was nice. It eased my sore muscles. I stood still and let the water rush over me. I knew I'd never be clean but the biting of those water droplets was a refreshing pain. It reminded me that I was alive. Some days I needed the reminder. Most days I couldn't stand it.

Cleaned and clothed, we shuffled into our first reprogramming class of the day. We always begin with the True History of Humanity. In the class our reprogrammer, Professor Staten, stood at the front of the room. He told us the Overlords have always been with us. They came here centuries ago. They were our gods then, they built the pyramids, promised the Incans they'd return, and told the Mayans it would be in the year 2012.

Even before then, they were here. They led us from the primordial sludge. They directed our evolution. They gave us our intelligence. They have always been our masters. We have always been their slaves.

Despite what they tell us, the men who surrendered weren't envoys of gods. They didn't see the divine light and step forward to save mankind from himself. They weren't even just trying to protect their friends, their families, their loved ones from having to suffer a long, futile war.

They were opportunists who sold their own species for personal gain. They were cruel and merciless, capable of anything if it benefited them. Their payment for mankind and Earth was power and authority in the new, alien-governed world. They became our rulers. They answered to no one but the Overlords.

After the assessments and the interrogations, they had lined us up outside along a ditch dug behind the housing development. Inside the ditch had lain the decaying bodies of the men and women over fifty. The in-between age group were then given a choice. They could pledge allegiance to the Overlords or join the elders in the grave.

Those that had pledged were forced to prove their loyalty by killing those that hadn't. We had all been made to watch, as they instructed the last true humans in the world to crawl into the grave, and the pledges opened fire.

It was as the bullets ripped through the bodies of good men and women in that grave that I had broken away from the group. Outside of that basement, a truck had pulled up. The bodies of the children who had had their harnesses removed were being piled into the truck's bed.

Struggling against a pair of soldiers determined to restrain me and drag me back to the group, I had watched them lift Ben from the basement. His body had been limp. His head lolled between his shoulders. They had tossed him into the truck to be disposed of with the others. I didn't even realize until they had finally struck me with the butt of a rifle that the entire time I had stood there I had been screaming his name.

Eventually, the Overlords had arrived at our camp. They had come to select children to take and harness. They had us line up and two of the Overlords walked the length of the line, looked us over. Children around me had wept and pleaded to be overlooked. At that moment, I prayed to be chosen.

I thought then that Ben had worn the harness and that if I wore it, through it, we would be forever connected. In that way, I could have a part of him with me always.

But I wasn't chosen. Whatever the Overlords were looking for that day, I didn't have it.

The Overlords had left with the children they chose that night. The following day, the rest of us were loaded on buses and sent to reprogramming facilities where the evil bastards that had forfeited our world were to teach us the true meaning of surrender.

On arriving at Rochester, we immediately began the process of losing our humanity. We were stripped entirely of all our belongings. We were no longer allowed to own anything. Then they shaved our heads. We were no longer allowed our individuality.

They lined us up naked and assigned us each a number. It was branded into the back of our necks, a black barcode. We were later given tags with the number punched into it for easier identification. That first day they made us call off our numbers, shouting them down the line. If we made a mistake, or took too long to call off, they made us run a lap around the facility.

Then they switched us around, made us call off our numbers again out of order. We did this the entire day. The sun had begun setting. The air had grown chilly and we struggled to remember when to call off as we shivered and huddled together in attempt to warm our bare bodies. Finally, they had sprayed us down with a high-powered hose and told us to run laps until the whistle blew.

When the whistle had blown, our feet were bloody. Our bodies were covered in sweat and cake with mud. Some of the boys had collapsed during the laps. We were told to leave them there. I still don't know what their fate became. We were taken inside.

They had given us things to wear. Gray sweats and t-shirts, underwear. These weren't to be ours. In the morning we would be given day clothes. At night we would be given new clothes for bed. The clothes we wore would be shuffled into the laundry, handed out to someone new the next time. Essentially, we all shared clothes.

In those first few months, we were made to forget our names and become our numbers. Beginning in the morning, every hour on the hour, they took us outside. We were made to remove our pants and kneel on the pavement. It was littered with jagged pebbles that bit into our bare knees. Then we called off our numbers.

They had started teaching us our daily chores. At first, some of us had felt like fighting and struggling. They had fed us only a bowl of brown rice soaked in chicken broth for every meal. They had worked us for hours on end without break until our bones cracked, our skin blistered and cracked, and our hands bled. Some boys had died in those first months of exhaustion or from other undisclosed reasons.

We had eventually lost the will to fight. That had been when they began the lashings. At night before bed we were made to stand in a line outside our dormitory. Our shirts were removed and our hands lay flat on the wall. One at a time, they came to each of us and whipped us. We were given a lashing for every year of our life. As one boy was lashed, the others were made to count off.

For countless months we endured this. Then they gave us a way out. We were given a choice. We could take the lashing or we could say this line, "The Overlords are my masters. I live and die for them", repeated once for every lashing. If we hesitated in our recitation, said it wrong, or didn't sound as though we meant it, then we would still be given the lashings.

Every night we were given this choice. At first most of the boys refused to say the line. Then one by one, they each gave in. I was one of the last to refuse. It took a week of my being the last in my dormitory, the other boys jeering behind my back "what do you have to prove", pinning me in my bed and beating me at night helpless in the dark, before I finally broke.

It wasn't many days after that we had all broken. The boy that had held out the longest was brought outside to the front of the facility to be punished for his obstinacy. We had been made to watch as he knelt naked on the ground before us and repeated the line over and over and over and over again. They had given us rocks and they instructed us to throw them at him.

The thought to hesitate, to question the instruction, to disobey it, never entered our minds. We didn't just throw our rocks at him. We had taken our aim carefully. We had put our full weight into the toss. We had wanted to hurt him. We had wanted to do damage. We had wanted to teach him a lesson.

He continued repeating the line for as long as he could as rocks pummeled into him. One had struck him on the head and he keeled over silent, blood gushing from the wound, but still we lobbied the rocks at him. We had picked more rocks off the ground, scoured for the tiniest pebble that could do any possible damage.

Our rage at that moment, even now, I can't understand.

After we had calmed down, he was dead. We had killed him. That night, me and two other boys, the other two that had taken their lashings longer than any others, were made to bury him. When we lifted the boy up to lower in the grave we dug, I had thought of Ben, and how he had looked in those soldiers arms being tossed into the back of that truck.

I needed to know. That name written on a tab in the warden's book, I needed to know what it said in its entirety. I needed to see it, to read it, to be certain.

I needed to know if it was Ben.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note**: For clarification, paragraphs describing a "flashback" are written in present tense (ie. I do, I run, I see). Paragraphs which represent thoughts and events in the 'present' are written in past tense (ie. I did, I ran, I saw). Dialogue from the past or that is remembered is italicized.

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3.

In Rochester the guards were referred to as Older Brothers. We weren't supposed to call them guards. We were told not to think of them as guards. They didn't want us to think of Rochester as a prison. It wasn't a prison. It was more like a school. We were there to learn, not to be punished. At least, that's what they told us.

We weren't supposed to think of Brayden as a 'warden' either, but everyone did. He never corrected us when we called him warden, only the Brothers did. I think he liked it. It made him somehow better than us.

There weren't a lot of Brothers at Rochester. Maybe twenty or thirty. I never counted. They all lived at the facility, on the fourth floor, same as the warden. Sometimes they were allowed to leave. I don't know where they went. Maybe there was a city somewhere that had picked up again like normal after the surrender. Everything there went on as if the aliens had never come.

The Brothers weren't all like the warden. Some were. Some were worse. Some weren't so bad. They all fucked us but I think for most of them it was only because they hadn't been with a woman in so long. They were desperate.

I didn't know what happened to the girls and women when we shipped off to Rochester. Most of the boys talked about there being reprogramming facilities for girls also. They talked about it with a kind of hope that if they ever got out of Rochester they would find one and marry her and settle down. They would gladly serve the aliens if that was the life they'd be given.

Some of the boys thought that the girls weren't in reprogramming facilities but in breeding facilities instead. We humans were a resource. We provided labor for the aliens. In these breeding facilities girls were forcibly impregnated. It was an endless supply of slaves. The boys who talked about it liked the idea that the girls were made pregnant through rape. Then they could think about being chosen to rape the girls. I thought artificial insemination was more likely.

There were other rumors going around. I liked the one that the girls were sterilized and then sent to reprogramming facilities. The aliens would probably have the technology to grow humans in tubes. They wouldn't want us to be able to breed on our own outside of their control. I liked this one only because I didn't want to think about more people I knew being dead or forced to do horrible things. I knew a lot of girls in the 2nd Mass.

I don't actually think there are any reprogramming facilities for girls. If there were any girls or women left in the world, the Older Brothers wouldn't be at Rochester fucking us little boys.

The warden enjoyed fucking us boys. He was twisted in that way. The way we used to be cautioned about by our mothers. Back when we had mothers and people like him weren't given positions of authority because of the way he was twisted. He preferred boys between thirteen and seventeen. There was something about the beginning of puberty that turned him on. Sometimes he chose older boys though, if they looked younger. Sometimes he chose younger, if they looked older.

I had been at Rochester three months the first time I was fucked. I had heard it had happened to some of the other boys. We didn't really talk about it a whole lot. Maybe we thought that if we did it would mark us as next. The boys it happened to never talked about it. We only knew by the way he walked, or the dead look in his eyes.

When we did talk about it we called it 'detention'. We would say things like "three-oh-seven got sent to detention this morning". It wasn't so much to pass around the information but so we knew to cover the boy on chores. In the beginning we were all sympathetic about it. After we'd all been through it, we all kind of lost that sympathy.

My first time went like this, one of the Brothers called me and another boy into the bathroom on the second floor. It had been cleaned that morning but he told us it wasn't good enough. He pointed out spots on the floor that weren't clean.

"_There's dirt here and here and there. Is this how you serve our masters?_" he had kept shouting things like that. This was before the lashings so we didn't really see much merit in his words.

He made us get on our hands and knees to scrub the tiled floor with tiny brushes. He stood over us. He had his arms folded across his chest. He watched us as we worked. I don't know if it was watching us on our hands and knees like that that was what started it, by that time none of the Brothers would have had a girl in almost a year, or if he was one of those that had been twisted like the warden from the start.

Not even half-way across the tiles my brush's bristles were ground to the head. I had stood up. I looked the Brother in the eye. I asked the Brother for another brush. I didn't know better then. I was still bold, defiant, stupid. I still believed that despite the surrender and the Overlords taking complete control that the world still operated on the same rules.

The Brother had grabbed hold of my collar. He dragged me into one of the stalls. He shoved me against the wall. My knee hit the toilet bowel rim. It bruised a sickly black, purple, and red later. He told the other boy to keep working.

I had struggled at first. I was small. I was young. I had eaten nothing but brown rice and chicken broth for so many months. He was older. He was larger. His arms were thick muscle. His body was a sturdy brick wall.

He closed the stall door and pinned my front side to it. He had my wrists held over my head in one hand. That was how much larger than me he was. His breath blasted hot on the back of my neck. It rippled the tiny hairs there.

He undid his belt and pants with his other hand. I could hear the clanking of his belt buckle. He tugged my sweatpants and boxers down under my butt. I could feel his cock. It was hard and erect. His pubic hair was thick. It brushed against my skin. It itched. I attempted another struggle. He drove his fist into my back and into my side under my ribs.

He didn't bother preparing me in any way. He just stuck it in and started thrusting like he would a woman. I wasn't a virgin. I had been bottom with other boys before. Most of the boys I had been with had more experience than me. But I had been with boys with no experience. I had been Ben's first. He hadn't known what to do that first night. I had to talk him through it. I had thought I knew how much it could hurt. I was wrong.

All I thought then was of the pain. My skin was ripping. My body was splitting in two, in three, in uncountable fragments. I saw white and black ink-splotched across my vision. I thought of the cold door shaking and rickety and threatening to break beneath me.

The Brother never climaxed. He lost his erection before he ever came close. I was slick inside with blood. He pulled out. I could feel the blood trickling down my leg. It was warm and cold at the same time. My legs buckled. I collapsed to the ground. I didn't care that his dick was hanging in my face. My body was throbbing too intensely.

He tugged up his pants. He rebuttoned them. His belt buckle clanked as he redid it. Then he dragged me to my feet by my throat. He opened the door and pushed me out. I tripped over my sweatpants still swaddled around my thighs. I stumbled to the ground.

I saw the other boy. He knelt on the ground. He had the small brush held tight in his hand. He stared at me. His eyes were wide. I imagined I could see my reflection in them. His face was pale. I realized then that he heard everything; my panting, my moaning, my screaming; the Brother's grunts and groans of effort.

I was humiliated. I couldn't look at him. I was a mess. My cheeks were wet with tears. Snot was dripping from my nose. My blood had smeared across the tiles we'd only just finished scrubbing.

The Brother yelled at him to keep working. He turned away. He started scrubbing again. I could still feel his eyes on me. I could still see his expression. It had been scared and disgusted. But mostly, it had been scathing. In his eyes I had asked for it to happen. It was my fault. I had done something wrong and that had been my punishment.

The Brother yelled at me to clean myself up. My body trembled. It felt weak and intangible. I made several attempts to stand before I made it to my feet. I hobbled to the sink. I grabbed some paper towels. I dampened them. I did my best to wash the blood from my leg. I couldn't stop the bleeding. The Brother yelled at me to hurry. I gave up on the blood, tugged my pants back up. Then he gave me another brush and made me clean my own blood off the tile.

Later, when he decided the bathroom was clean enough, he let the other boy go and took me to the front of the facility. There was a flagpole but no flag hung on it. He made me remove my shirt. He had me hug the flagpole as he took a switch across my back. He beat me until I couldn't stand any longer.

It wasn't like receiving a punishment. When the Brothers beat us as punishment it was a cold and distant action. It was almost mechanical on their part. At that moment as this Brother cracked the switch against my spine there was a rage pouring out of him. I didn't understand it then. I didn't know what I'd done wrong. I didn't know why I was receiving such a harsh punishment. I didn't know why he was so angry with me.

Looking back, I realized he was mad that he couldn't get off in the bathroom stall. He'd lost his erection before finishing the job and he was upset by it, maybe embarrassed. He blamed me for it. Like the other boy, when the Brother had fucked me, it was my fault.

A few days after my night with the warden, I met with one of the Brothers in a bathroom. It was break hour.

We were always given an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening to ourselves. Usually we sat around and did nothing during that time. We didn't want to call attention to ourselves. Sometimes they'd give us a rubber ball. Boys would form teams outside and play a game that was a mix of soccer, football, kickball, and even basketball depending on the mood.

Most of the Brothers were forgettable. They beat us. They yelled at us. They gave us orders. They fucked us. We didn't need to remember them. This Brother was different. He was more opportunist than guard. He spoke to us boys sometimes. Offered to get us things we needed. For a price.

The month before one of the other boys slit his wrists in the bathroom. The warden was upset. The boy had been one of the warden's favorites. He chose the boy every week to bring him his nightly drink. The warden had demanded to know where the boy got the razor. Everyone said they didn't know. We were beaten regularly for two weeks in hopes someone would break and give up the information. No one broke. Everyone knew it was this Brother.

He waited for me in the back of the bathroom. I hurried inside. I stood anxiously. I kept my eyes trained on the ground.

"Did you get it?" I asked.

He pulled out a plastic bag from his pocket. It was filled with little white pills. He dangled it in front of my face. I tentatively touched the bag. I examined the pills inside. I glanced up at him, immediately dropped my gaze.

"And these…they'll work?" I asked.

"They'll knock you out cold," the Brother answered.

He narrowed his eyes to tiny pinpricks. He looked me over. There was suspicion in his expression.

"Why do you need them again?" he asked.

I kept my voice calm and I didn't hesitate. It was important not to hesitate.

"I've just been having trouble sleeping," I told him.

He stared at me a long time. I forced myself to stand still. I forced my expression blank. The years at Rochester had taught me to hide my emotions well. After a few moments, he seemed to decide it was the truth. I reached for the bag and he held it away.

"Ah, ah," he said, "Payment first. I need to be certain that…" he looked me over. I shivered though it wasn't cold, "You can afford the bag."

I nodded. I stepped forward. He tucked the bag back into his pocket. He was a larger man. His grossly enlarged belly spilled out of his black uniform pants. He was always greasy. I never knew why. He always looked as though he'd taken a bath in a vat of lard. He kept his hair shiny and smoothed back with some kind of hair gel. Or maybe it wasn't gel. Maybe it was just his hairs' oils.

I undid his pants. I lowered myself to my knees. I removed his cock from his underwear. It was limp. I prodded along the shaft and around his balls with my tongue to excite him a bit. It twitched. I could feel it hardening. I took its tip in my mouth. I touched my tongue to the head of his shaft. I teased it a few minutes before sliding my mouth fully over it.

In those past three years at Rochester I'd given so many blowjobs, I didn't even think about it anymore. It was like another chore. I'd go through the motions. Put my mouth here, slide my tongue there.

We could usually trade blowjobs to get out of punishments or chores. I'd given blowjobs for other things too, a change of clothes in the middle of the day usually because one of the Brothers had fucked me and soiled my clothes, or an extra serving at dinner time. I once gave a blowjob for a new toothbrush.

I'd given Ben a blowjob once. I would've given him more, but then the surrender happened and I never got a chance. It had been his first. I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be the best he would ever have. It ended up being the only one he ever had.

I'd been thinking of Ben more since my night with the warden. I thought of him then as I sucked of the Brother. I thought of the attic of an old Colonial home.

A fog rolls over the ghost town where we've set up camp. The attic is musty. Saturated dust clings in layers over everything. His brothers are downstairs. There are others downstairs also. We can hear them talking. They're loud. They're laughing.

He's sitting on an old crate. I'm kneeling in front of him. He kisses me hard on the mouth. He kisses my cheeks, my eyes, my jaw, my forehead, my nose. I push him back on the crate and unbutton his pants. I'm nervous. He knows it.

"_You don't have to do this_," he tells me.

"_I want to do this._ _It's only that I want it to mean something_," I admit.

The Brother wrapped his hand around the back of my head. He pulled me towards him. His cock jabbed me in the back of the throat. I had to choke back my gag reflex. He leaned against the bathroom wall. He was really starting to get into it.

I slide Ben's pants away. I slip his boxers down and reveal his cock. It's already hardening. I move my lips along its tip. I know the hot feel of my breath is driving him crazy. He squirms. I smile. I stroke his thighs. I flick my tongue across the tip of his cock. He gasps. I want to tease him more but I know he won't last much longer. I take his full length in my mouth.

The Brother climaxed. I swallowed his ejaculate. I licked him clean. It wasn't that I liked it or I wanted to, only that there wouldn't be a mess for me to clean later. I stood and wiped any remaining cum from my lips. He zipped himself up. He smiled at me. I dropped my eyes. I fought the urge to cringe. He pulled out the baggie. He held it out to me. I took the bag. I looked the pills over again.

"How many should I use?" I asked.

"Do I look like a doctor? Maybe start with two. If that's not enough, take two more. Just don't take the whole bag," he answered.

"How long should it last?" I asked.

He gave me a look that meant I should stop asking questions. I folded the bag up. I slipped it under my shirt caught in the band of my sweatpants. I started to the exit.

"Four eighty one," he called.

I paused. I turned towards him. I kept my eyes down.

"It was a pleasure doing business with you. Let me know when you run out," he told me.

I nodded and turned away. I hurried up the stairs to my dormitory. It was luckily empty.

Under my bed was a vent opening. It had taken me days on end and many bloody fingers to pry the screws from its cover. I used the cover as a disguise. It dangled from the loosened screws. The vent space behind it was a good hiding hole.

Inside I kept a shard of glass I'd salvaged when one of the windows of the facility was shattered when one of the other boys attempted jumping from the fourth floor. It was my emergency back-up plan in case it turned out that my captain had really been executed during the surrender and the resistance wasn't reforming underground. There was also a lighter I had to pay for in ways I don't ever want to remember to get.

Ben and I sit on the crates. His arms are wrapped around my shoulders. Its cold but his warmth encompasses me. I sneeze from the dust. He laughs at me. His brother is calling for us downstairs.

"_We'll do that again sometime_," I promise him. He smiles broad as the sunrise.

"_Maybe next time I'll do you_," he tells me. He presses a kiss to my cheek and says, "_You'll have to teach me that thing you did with your tongue_."

I grin, "_In time_ _I'll teach you everything I know_."

I placed the pills inside the vent. I put the cover back in place. Now all I had to do was wait until the warden chose me to bring his drink again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note**: For clarification, paragraphs describing a "flashback" are written in present tense (ie. I do, I run, I see). Paragraphs which represent thoughts and events in the 'present' are written in past tense (ie. I did, I ran, I saw). Dialogue from the past or that is remembered is italicized.

Sorry for the long delay in update.

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4.

The next night new boys were brought to Rochester.

Several Older Brothers busted into our dorm. They shook us from our beds. I didn't know the time. It was still dark outside. They had us dress. They marched us downstairs and lined us up in front of the facility as the bus pulled in. A gray pink haze was settling along the horizon. The air was crisp. We wore our usual clothes, thin t-shirts, our arms bare. The cold pricked our skin but we didn't notice.

The new boys climbed down out of the bus. There were three of them in all. I assumed brothers. They had the same kind of eyes, pale complexion, hollow expressions. The two eldest shared a mouth. The two youngest shared a chin. They were dressed in blue jeans. The jeans were faded from overuse. They were wearing t-shirts layered over one another.

There was something foreign about seeing other dressed in different clothes. It bothered me, I didn't know why. From the way the boys around me became tense and restless I knew it bothered them also. There was an anger inside of us that couldn't be explained.

It had been a long time since new boys had been brought to Rochester. Almost a year, I think. I don't know if it was because there were so few humans left that were not a part – either willingly or forced - of the global surrender, or if it was because they were executing more often now whenever, if, refugees were found.

The initiation rites had changed since my first day at Rochester. It was no longer the responsibility of the Older Brothers to welcome new boys. It was now our responsibility. The rites were of our making, a mesh of what we could recall from our initiation years before, and what we thought we could recall. Overtime, like with all things, our memories of those cruel months had faded and all that was left, all we could remember with any clarity, was the pain and the humiliation.

We made the three brothers strip off their clothes. We told them to kneel in the courtyard on their hands and knees. The sharp, uneven pavement bit into them, I could see it in the way their features screwed in grimace. Their bare backs, smooth, unadulterated skin, bronzed from time spent in the sun, glistened exposed and vulnerable to us.

They were assigned numbers.

Seventeen. The middle boy.

Eighteen. The oldest.

Nineteen. The youngest.

Then we made them call out their numbers in chronological order with the rest of us. It wasn't easy for them. There so many holes in the number line. So many numbers had been lost over the years.

We'd had practice, day in and day out, rattling off our new identities, the numbers etched into our minds, the numbers assigned to ourselves and those who called before and after us, that it was our second nature and we couldn't even fathom anymore how anyone, no matter how new to it, could not be capable. We had no pity for them.

If they hesitated, if they missed their number, if they forgot, or refused to say anything, we each walked down the line, took a switch in hand and struck them across their shoulders, as they were forced to repeat their number between lashings.

The youngest made the most honest mistakes, but the oldest made an effort to mess up more. I think he believed if he did worse, somehow, someway, it would be as though he were protecting his brothers.

By the fifth time I came up to take the switch and strike the youngest, as he whimpered "nineteen" and tears streamed steady down his cheeks, I caught the oldest brother's eye. His emotions were rent before me.

Determination was obvious.

I knew determination once. We all knew it once. It felt strong. It felt like running at full speed. It coursed the blood through the veins hot and acidic. It burned in the eyes, white and blinding. It put vows in the heart and spat promises off the tongue. It was easily broken.

But underneath the brimstone, steady and cold, was the love of a brother. I knew that once too. It was constant. It was callous. Irrational at times. It never died. It never faded. It could never, ever, be broken.

_"You know, Jimmy, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you had a crush on my brother…"_

I stood frozen. I couldn't bring the switch down. I couldn't strike that young boy, trembling, sniveling, tears and snot damp on his face, blood drenched across his splintered backside. He was this pathetic little shriveled up child. He couldn't have been older than six, seven maybe.

I realized then that he was raised in this world.

Had he known anything else? Could he remember the world as it was before the skies fell? Before scattered men and women died for a futile war? Before cowards shook hands with devils from hells galaxies and light years away?

Or did he know only this. This desolate world of surrender.

Such a small boy. A scared boy. A child that never was. I'd been small once. I'd been scared once. He spent his whole life cowering in shadows and though he'd known, he never truly understood why.

But now he understood. He understood the grit beneath his palms. He understood the fear that came with uncertainty. That pain never ended, it only became accustomed. He understood that the heavens held no angels.

He would never have an opportunity to dream. Never have an opportunity to live, to love, to laugh. He'd never know what it was to touch someone he wanted to touch, to kiss someone he wanted to kiss, to make and be made love to.

The Brothers would use him up. They would suck him dry; make him brittle, knees weak and stomach twisted sick around itself. They would put him on his knees silently begging for a mercy that may never have existed in the first place. It had always reeked of an empty promise, a myth like the old stories of good overcoming evil.

The Brothers would hurt him in ways his older brother could never imagine having to protect him from.

"What are you waiting for, four eighty one?" Twenty seven, hissed from behind me.

The others were watching me. I could feel their eyes ripping me apart. They were confused by my hesitance. No one hesitated anymore. Hesitation meant doubt. Doubt meant question. We didn't ask questions. We did what we were told to do. We had no real choices. We had no free will of our own. There was only the will of the Overlords or death.

In life, you do what you have to do to survive even if at times surviving is less appealing than not.

I thought of a time I knelt in a room thick with a humid heat. Strong, calloused fingers push through my hair, massage my scalp, direct me forward. I'm choking on the dick in my mouth, but I put aside that urge to gag. I realize on that ground, a taste of salt burning the back of my throat, heartache thunderous in my chest, that I really do want to impress him.

When he climaxes I swallow as much cum as I can but I lose some, tear myself away in shock and spit out whatever still clings to my mouth. I dry heave a few seconds. I can't stop myself. He laughs at me, a deep, throated bellowing laugh, and I glare in return up at his dark eyes and chiseled, handsome face.

I'm embarrassed but I don't want him to know. It hurts somehow, and I don't know why.

Twenty seven ripped the switch from my hand and struck the youngest brother with an inhuman force that dropped the boy howling to the ground. His flesh sliced cleanly open, a sickly white crevice bubbling with crimson and black.

Some cuts never heal.

Some pains you never forget.

Sometimes there isn't enough blood to spill.

_"…Jimmy, if I didn't know any better…"_

The middle brother moved as though to go to the youngest on the ground, the oldest moved as though to strike twenty seven but both halted almost instantly.

Twenty seven twirled the switch suggestive in his fingers.

Our crowd was dense with tension.

Violence seeped in every boy that stood there, the inexplicable anger etched in features that could no longer bend to any other emotion.

Only suppressed, directionless fury.

"Go stand by the pole, four eighty one," twenty seven instructed me and I did as told.

The gathered group of boys parted to let me through. They watched me in solemn awe. There was a strange and foreign look in their faces.

A fear, perhaps. It seemed as though they might be scared.

Of what? Who knew? Everything. Me. Themselves.

Maybe just of the unknown.

Because somehow, in some way, my single action or lack thereof had suddenly cast me as unknown.

I stood at the pole. The initiation of the three brothers continued.

I didn't watch.

I didn't listen.

I thought of a summer day back in a time when I believed I had nothing left of myself to give up. I stand in a room coated in dust. Its stench is mildew and cotton balls. The heat is only slightly overpowered by the humidity. I wipe saliva and cum from my lip. His eyes are watching me. They're touching me in places his hands can't reach. I pretend not to care.

_"I might spend tonight with Lisa," _he says it plainly, waits as though for a response.

_"Lisa?"_

I know exactly who she is, but I want to hear him say it. There's a satisfaction that comes with my exact role in his life spoken aloud, as if a kind of confirmation for every sin I've ever committed.

"_She's nineteen, blonde, legs up to here."_

_"Oh."_

Again, he waits, but I don't know what he's looking for.

Me to cry?

To yell?

To beg?

We've done this too many times before. I never held the illusion our encounters meant anything, and he never let me believe they might. I do things women won't, that's all there is between us. I want to impress him. I don't. Our time together is so far removed from anything like emotion it's made me numb inside. I don't remember what it is to feel.

Yet sometimes, he says these things, it seems, as if to test me. As if he's looking for a hint at something more. A reason to hurt me.

"_I'll probably hang out with Ben tonight_," I say.

His eyes glisten at the name. I know his expression, he wears it so well, I long for it sometimes, the love of a brother.

"Four eighty one," twenty seven barked. I tilted my head to acknowledge him.

Everyone had gathered round. The brothers were forced to stand at the front of the crowd. It's been decided that I'll become an integral part of their initiation. I didn't mind it. They needed to learn this, it's important. Hesitation. Doubt. Question. These things gets you punished. These things get you killed.

I didn't need instruction. I knew what I was supposed to do. I stripped away my shirt. I took up position at the pole. I braced myself against it. My arms clung round it, embraced its cold metal, the most warmth we experienced anymore in this world.

I took a deep breath. I let it out slow.

I could see the brothers' eyes on me. Widened and repulsed as they saw, as they knew, as they would come to understand in time, what three years at Rochester did to a body.

I don't know who held the switch. Maybe only twenty seven. Maybe all of them. I don't know. I don't care. In the end it doesn't matter. I'd stood at that pole so many times, every time began to bleed together until my memories of it all became so faded and confused that when I went back in my mind I was the one holding the switch and Ben stood at the pole and the sky burned red.

I barely registered the switch's tip licking across my shoulders. I couldn't even hear my own cries of pain. I didn't feel when my knees finally collapsed beneath me. I didn't realize when I tumbled down, blood and sweat and tears mingling and falling to the blackened pavement in thick splats. I didn't even notice that although I'd fallen, broken and spent, they continued to beat me for my crime.

_"You know, Jimmy, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you had a crush on my brother…"_

_"It's just hanging out."_

_"You've been hanging out together a lot."_

_"I don't have a crush on him. I could never have a crush on _him_. I just…I feel sorry for him is all. He doesn't have anyone else."_

_"Oh? Really? And what exactly is so wrong with him that you could _never_ have a crush on him?"_

_"Nothing. There's nothing wrong with him. He's okay. What? Do you want me to have a crush on your brother?"_

Seventeen and eighteen were assigned to my dorm. They surged with anger when they found out they'd be separated from their youngest brother, but it didn't last long, burned hot and fast and fizzled out quick. They were too weary and broken from their initiation. They weren't going to last long I knew.

At dinner, eighteen and seventeen were made to watch as we ate. They weren't allowed a meal that first night. In the morning, they would be given a probation meal of rice cooked in chicken broth. Nineteen was given food. The youngest were always given food. They were easy to break with minimal effort.

Twenty seven elected me to monitor eighteen and seventeen. Someone needed to watch them during their probation. I would be responsible for restricting their meals, leading them through chores, taking them to classes, teaching them our routines. Their failures would be my failures. Their punishments would be my punishments.

Because of my hesitance, twenty seven believed I was best for this job. He was testing me, I knew. He was worried I was forgetting my programming. If I made mistakes, if I kept slipping up, he would be punished. I was his responsibility. He wanted me to remember that, by making the new boys mine.

After dinner, I led seventeen and eighteen to the showers. They moved slowly. They trailed their hands against the walls for support. They trembled in the cold water as the blood and grime was knocked off their bodies and swirled down the drains.

Seventeen sobbed uncontrollably. Eighteen moved to comfort him.

Despite his pain, I could see it clearly, and his fear, eighteen kept his jaw clenched. His eyes burned with a kind of fiery rage that I had once but it died out long ago.

I let eighteen place a hand on seventeen's shoulder before roaring at him to finish his shower. Just that touch, for a fraction of a second, it was the most I could give them.

For whatever reason, eighteen looked to me, sought out my eyes, but I dropped my gaze immediately. He kept trying, many times but eventually he scoffed, twisted away, and I thought bitterly to myself, he would learn soon enough.

Your eyes give away everything. If you've anything left, the only way to hold onto it is to avert your eyes.

Alone in the laundry room, we dressed. They were given gray shirts and sweats to replace their clothes. I had to re-dress in my dirty, blood stained clothes. I wouldn't get a new uniform until the morning. In a way, it was part of my punishment, as though a scarlet letter for the world to see. I had done wrong.

Eighteen moved beside me as I pulled on my pants. I froze, caught my breath, waited anxiously for whatever he would do or say.

"Ely," he told me.

I didn't reply. I think he took it to mean I didn't understand.

"It's my name. Ely. And my brother is…"

"We don't have names here," I remanded him sharply.

I pulled my shirt roughly over my head. My entire body hurt, each part in a different way, when I moved. I winced, an involuntary reaction to the pain which I had no control over, but paid it no further mind. I knew of, I'd felt, worse pains. I sniffled loudly.

"You'd be better just forgetting them. Whoever you were before. Whoever and whatever you knew. Forget it all. Things'll be easier if you do that now."

I stepped away from him.

"Finish dressing or we'll be late for lights out. We don't want to be late."

I thought of the stench in that room several summers ago in a place hundreds of miles away. It is damp with a sickly pungent smell of sweat, dirt, and sex. It burns in my nostrils, a scent I could never forget, and never be entirely certain I want to. He stares at me but I can't meet his harsh glare. He's looking me over. He's judging me. He's figuring things out about me that I'm too afraid to figure out about myself.

_"It's just because I feel sorry for him…he freaks people out. He freaks me out too but he's your brother, so…"_

_"So?"_

_"I just could never feel that way about him."_

I leave the room first. I can't stand the heat anymore. He's still dressing anyway. He's thinking about his night plans.

In the dorm, in the dark, I waited hours in the dark, tormented by memories of a boy I'd tried so hard to forget, until I was sure the others were asleep. I slipped from my bed. I removed the vent cover. I was quiet and cautious. I couldn't be caught or I'd never know what the tab of that book said. I carefully plucked two of the pills from the bag inside of my hiding hole. I set them on my tongue. I swallowed them down hard. They scraped the sides of my throat on their way to my gut.

I find Ben outside. He stands, leans against the wall, beside the door of the room. My heart startles at the sight. His is a kind of beauty that hurts just to look at. His head is tipped down. His face is troubled. He doesn't acknowledge me as I approach.

_"Ben?"_

"Ben."

I put the bag back inside my hiding place. I repositioned the vent. I crawled back into bed. I could hear seventeen crying. I could hear eighteen whispering to him.

Words of comfort?

Perhaps.

Breakable promises?

Of course.

The love of a brother? I frowned at the darkness around me.

Everything can be broken.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Note**: Parts of this chapter may be rewritten later. Thank you for the review._

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5.

I'm not entirely sure what Rochester was before the war. Some kind of medical building, I think. Its halls stretched into forever, tiled floors that clacked beneath our feet. The acrid stench of illness and disease hovered thick in its air. Its rooms had a strange sterility about them, even caked in dust and grime, like the rest of us, stained yellow and brown from those hard years fighting to survive the war.

It, like the rest of us, had survived and I wondered if it was just as bitter about it as the rest of us.

There were a lot of floors to Rochester. I wasn't sure how many, though I tried counting once during break using the windows as markers, but I could never be sure I was counting right and I kept getting interrupted. There was something like ten or twelve or fourteen. There might be a basement also.

I don't remember why I did it, counted the floors. At the time it seemed important. It was after they'd started the lashings, before they gave us the oath to "save" ourselves. I kept telling myself I needed to know the layout of the whole facility. I'd draw it in the dirt outside then stamp out the lines; over and over and over again. I told myself I'd need to know these things, if the Resistance came, if the opportunity to escape came. Now I know I was just trying to keep myself from cracking. It worked, for a bit, but then it just made things worse.

Nothing will break you more than the sudden realization that there is no hope.

We're only allowed on the first five floors of Rochester. Our dorms, the showers, the cafeteria, the Warden's room, the classrooms are all within the first five floors. I think the Brothers sleep in rooms on the sixth floor, maybe. I don't know if there's anything higher up. It seems like there would be, though.

There are other buildings around Rochester too. I guess they would be considered part of Rochester. They're inside of the fence, around Rochester's grounds, and the Brothers go inside of them sometimes. We aren't allowed within fifty feet of the other buildings. The only places on the grounds we're allowed to go to are the crop fields and the livestock pens.

I finished explaining these things to eighteen and seventeen while we finished up morning chores. They tried to ask questions, like what I thought were in the upper floors or the other buildings, or why we weren't allowed near the other buildings, stupid things that, even if I knew the answers to, wouldn't change anything.

When they saw their youngest brother, nineteen, they attempted to go to him and I told them to stop but they wouldn't listen. Our dorm leader, twenty-seven, yelled at them, then a Brother ended up stepping in, and all four of us got a switch across our hands. Twenty-seven put me on probation meal with the brothers that day, rice cooked in chicken broth, and later in the dorm he had other boys hold me and the brothers while he struck us with a pillowcase, bar of soap inside.

It made me mad. More mad than I could ever remember being in my life. The time I'd spent in Rochester made me forgetful in a way that I couldn't remember my own learning curve those first days three years ago. It made it hard for me to understand why it was so difficult to fall in line, do as told, to shut up, stop fighting, and just surrender.

Later that day, the opportunity to bring the Warden his drink came to me.

I wasn't chosen to do it that night. Another boy, fifty-three, was chosen. He sat outside crying and eighteen saw him, watched him for a long time. When I wasn't paying attention, eighteen went towards fifty-three. Even though it gave me the opportunity I needed, the thought of it still enrages me a little. After what happened that morning with their brother, you'd think they'd of learned.

"What's wrong with you?" eighteen asked.

"I can't do it…I can't do it again…I won't do it again…" fifty-three chanted, arms wrapped around himself, rocking himself back and forth.

I'd seen other boys break down like this. It starts with hysteria, like fifty-three, crying uncontrollably, paralyzed and unaware of the world around them. It didn't matter what you said to them, did to them, they wouldn't respond. Not like a normal person would respond anyway.

Next they stop functioning. They don't eat, sleep, shower, change their clothes, or even take a dump properly. I knew of one boy started shitting in the corner of the dorm room in the middle of the night. He wouldn't clean it up in the morning, either, and we had to do it. We'd wake up really early to clean it up before the Brother's came, because if they saw it, we'd all get lashings.

Then they become really paranoid, accusing people of things that never even happened, talking to the empty air, muttering under their breath. It only gets scary when they become violent. There was one boy that I tried to stop once, sitting in the laundry room clawing his arms raw, blood streaming down and curls of flesh building up under his fingernails. I tried talking to him first, placed my hands on his shoulders and he lunged at me, knocked me to the ground. The back of my head hit the cement hard enough to make a loud clacking noise and rattle my brain and cause ringing in my ears. He started choking me. It took five other boys to pull him off and by then I'd passed out.

There's nothing else after that. For every boy that goes through this, paranoia is the point of no return and it's the point when it becomes too difficult for us to keep covering up what's happening to them. Sometimes they find a way to kill themselves; usually they end up killing someone else or several others.

One boy managed to get away with killing four other boys. He'd sneak into the younger boys' dorm room at night, ghost one away to the showers, torture and rape the poor kid, then leave his body to be discovered in the morning. It went on for weeks, we never knew when a body would turn up, but he slipped up one night when he tried to take a ten year old, his first victims were five and six. The kid fought back, woke up the rest in his dorm, and they all attacked. We heard the commotion in our dorm, came in and took him, and tortured him to death, made it last four hours, one hour for every boy he took, and in the morning when our blood lust winded down, his was the last body to be found, and we spent sleepless nights haunted by the things we'd done to him.

Every man has a monster inside of him; some just keep it at bay longer.

If the Brothers find out about a boy cracking, he's taken away and we never see him again. We assume he dies because what else would they do with him? But some boys have theories that the real intention of Rochester is to drive us insane, and when we're good and crazy, they take us to the Overlords for some sinister purpose, their real reason for keeping us all alive. Of course, no one can think of what that purpose might be, so I don't really buy it.

Anyhow, fifty-three sat on the ground, ranting like a lunatic about not wanting to do things and at first I shrugged it off. It was only another boy cracking, another mess to sweep under the rug until it could no longer be hidden completely and our efforts ended up being all for naught.

"What do you have to do?" Eighteen asked.

"I can't do it again…I can't…I can't…" fifty-three continued rambling.

I went and took eighteen's arm, gave it a yank.

"Leave him," I said.

"He looks really upset," eighteen argued. Fucking little bastard was really pushing to get me lashings again. It all prickled inside of me, anger threatening to burst out and burn up everything around me.

"Warden picked him for nightcap," another boy, seven-oh-five, said.

He stopped and we both looked at fifty-three a moment, knowing pity in our eyes.

"It's the third time this week for him," seven-oh-five said.

"Nightcap?" eighteen questioned. Seven-oh-five only looked at eighteen, more knowing and less pity, eighteen would learn soon enough, but my eyes were still on fifty-three, gears in my brain tick-ticking away.

It had to seem natural, plausible. The other boys knew I could be soft; they took advantage of it sometimes, asking me to do things they couldn't stomach to do. I slipped to the ground and put a hand on fifty-three's own. It was a hesitant touch because you never knew how a boy would react to the most seemingly harmless touch in Rochester.

"It's okay," I told fifty-three, trying to put strength in my words but keep them shaky and reluctant, I didn't want to sound too eager, "You don't have to do it."

"What are you saying four-eighty-one? He has to go," seven-oh-five said. I silenced him with a short shake of my head, and patted fifty-three's hand gently.

"I'll do it," I whispered, "I'll go."

Fifty-three fell silent and seven-oh-five gave me a disquieted look. It was unheard of. No one volunteered to swap onto nightcap duty with another boy. No one wanted to see the warden at night, no one was so generous to offer up himself to spare another boy, and no one wanted to find out how the warden might react to such a change. He chose the boy who brought him his drink, handpicked every night, it was his choice not ours.

"I'll do it," I repeated and dared any of the other boys to challenge me. I met eighteen's eyes, and he stared at me with a strange something. A familiar something that almost made me remember what it was to smile. I couldn't remember the feeling, it had been so long. But I remembered in that very moment as I thought of the name in that book, like a spark of hope galvanizing my soul.

Once you're in surrender, it's difficult to remember things from before; how hard it was to get to where you are, only to forget you ever surrendered in the first place when suddenly you find yourself fighting again.


End file.
